I want to talk about the very first answer Donald Trump gave in
Wednesday night's presidential debate.

You may not remember it, because of all the insane things Trump
said later, but Trump's first answer was foreshadowing for
everything that would follow.

Moderator Chris Wallace asked a broad question about what
approach the Supreme Court should take in interpreting the
Constitution.

"It's just so imperative that we have the right justices," Trump
said. Then he continued:

"Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some
very, very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a
tremendous number of people, many, many millions of people that I
represent. And she was forced to apologize. And apologize she
did. But these were statements that should never, ever have been
made."

I actually
agree that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should not have
injected herself into the election by calling Trump a "faker,"
even though he is one. But that's not what's important right now.

What's important is that, when Donald Trump was asked what he
thought the Supreme Court should do with its power, the first
thing he decided was important to address was that the justices
on the court should be nice to him — and that he had
made one of them apologize to him when she wasn't.

This should not reassure conservatives who have somehow convinced
themselves Trump's approach would be to appoint judges who would
closely follow the Constitution, rather than judges who show
sufficient respect to him personally.

And over and over again during the debate, Trump brought matters
back to himself — to his own detriment.

When Clinton was answering awkward questions about the Clinton
Foundation, Trump redirected the conversation to praise his own
troubled foundation — prompting Wallace to press him on whether
he used foundation funds to pay a legal settlement for his
business.

When talking about Russian interference in the US election, Trump
again bragged that Russian President Vladimir Putin says nice
things about him.

If he didn't pay enough in taxes, he said that's because Clinton
didn't do enough to make him pay. (In fact, when she was a
senator, Clinton
voted to close a loophole he may have used.) He said he used
foreign steel only because Clinton didn't stop him from doing
that, either.

When Clinton later suggested Trump might find new ways to avoid
paying taxes — a practice Trump has bragged about in the past,
saying "that makes me smart" — he took personal offense, calling
her "such a nasty woman."

And when Clinton accused him of being so conspiracy obsessed and
so unwilling to admit his own failures that he even accused the
Emmys of being rigged when he didn't win those, he chose to
relitigate the issue, saying he really should have won an Emmy.